They were young, many of them struggling journalists. And though they’d been protesting since the days of Morsi’s predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, they’d missed the wave that swept many of their colleagues to prominence in the Arab Spring.

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Called Tamarod, or “rebel,” the campaign started as a signature drive demanding fresh presidential elections. But it quickly transformed into a country-wide effort to force Morsi from power. As Tamarod’s volunteers canvassed the country, veteran activists joined the effort. Egypt’s opposition parties—where many of these activists were central players—did the same.

Dissent against Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood had been spiraling since late last year, amid charges that Morsi was driving the country toward religious rule and becoming authoritarian. Campaigns and protests against him were commonplace. But Tamarod, according to veteran activists who joined its push, had two important advantages that helped it succeed where others had failed.

First was the relative anonymity of Tamarod’s leaders. They were fresh faces without the baggage of two years of animosity and infighting among the opposition. This made it easier for other activists—as well as regular Egyptians—to unite behind them.

And second, Tamarod organizers accepted the idea that if they could apply enough pressure against Morsi on the street, the army might step in to remove him from office.

Before Tamarod, the mainstream opposition had been hesitant even to make clear calls for Morsi’s removal, focusing instead on things like forming a consensus government. “People felt that the opposition didn’t have a way to give them an answer,” says Hossam Moenes, a youth leader with the Egyptian Popular Current, a powerful political group, who worked closely with Tamarod.

Anti-Morsi sentiment was already widespread enough to help Tamarod go viral—as the group’s volunteers hit the streets, many Egyptians just downloaded the signature form from its Web site and passed it around themselves. The opposition was pushing reform, Moenes says, “while the rest of the people were saying that the real problem was that Mohamed Morsi was the head of the government.”

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“Many of the liberals in the anti-Morsi wings do not trust and do not like the military,” says Paul Sullivan, a Middle East expert at Georgetown. But they are in the minority, Sullivan adds. “Most Egyptians right now seem to think of the military as part of the solution, not part of the problem. Egyptians in the main respect the army more than the Muslim Brotherhood.”

As the popular liberal blogger and activist who goes by the handle Big Pharaoh puts it: “I started to realize that it was only us, revolutionaries and activists, who were at odds with the army. The majority of Egyptians had no problem with the army, even during SCAF’s rule. June 30 was an eye-opener to me. We were living in our own bubble.”